


drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Jonah Magnus Being Jonah Magnus, One Shot, Prompt Fill, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29089356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: Four people who developed affection for Jonah Magnus and regretted it far too late, and one who didn’t.
Relationships: Barnabas Bennett & Jonah Magnus, Jonah Magnus & Albrecht von Closen, Jonathan Fanshawe & Jonah Magnus, Mordechai Lukas & Jonah Magnus
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Nothing’s final until you’re dead. And even then, I’m sure God negotiates." (Jonah Magnus) (anonymous)
> 
> Thank you for reading and especially for commenting. Comments are love. ♥

_Barnabas Bennett (Died: 1824)_

He loved Jonah Magnus, and that was his own fault. He’d always known, somehow, that Jonah would be the end of him, from the moment he saw the tall, slim man with the curving smile and the cold, measuring gray eyes.

They met at Robert Smirke’s house, at the first of what would prove to be many discussions of what the great architect referred to euphemistically as ‘balance.’ The lectures were by invitation only, and unlike most of the other men in Smirke’s circle, Barnabas was no architect. Nor was he a man of wealth and substance, like Mordechai Lukas.

Nevertheless, he was an artist in his own right, a painter of some little renown, and Smirke had commissioned him to sit in on his lectures and try to visualize the strange horrors that they were unfolding.

Jonah Magnus was very complimentary about his sketches, asked Barnabas all manner of questions, and before Barnabas quite knew what was happening, he had invited Jonah Magnus to supper at his home.

It was the first of many intimate suppers. But it never felt like a beginning of anything, only one more stage in a slow, inevitable fall.

* * *

_Albrecht Von Closen (Died: 1831)_

It had been a letter that first brought Jonah Magnus to Closen, and to Albrecht. A mutual friend by the name of Gottfried Wolfgang, a colleague of Albrecht’s from university who happened to be working in the same circles of study as Jonah, had written the letter of introduction that had enticed Jonah into Bavaria and onto Albrecht’s doorstep.

He wanted old legends, tales of the strange and the uncanny, and those Albrecht gave him in abundance. Nothing out of the common way, perhaps, and in those early days he’d been utterly unaware of what Jonah was really looking for, but good solid stories, nonetheless.

He had liked Jonah Magnus from the start, thought him a young man of considerable intelligence and uncommon sensitivity. He still liked Jonah, in spite of… everything. It was hard to keep track of it all.

Albrecht was tired. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since that winter in the Schwartzwald. And then the thefts from the estate in Schramberg and Wilhelm’s trial for murder… utterly ridiculous to believe that _Wilhelm_ … Well, he had been acquitted. Of course he had. Absurd to think that such a well-bred, mild young man could have perpetrated such outrages against one of the estate’s own servants, no matter how disreputable.

Even so, Albrecht rarely returned to Schramberg, after that. He had what he wanted from the estate. Klara was ill more and more frequently, unable to travel so far even in fine weather, and their sons had a strong dislike for the place.

Albrecht had never told Magnus, or indeed Wolfgang, about his sons. Most of his acquaintances believed that he and Karla remained childless. But there were boys, two of them, that they had reared and cared for, and that they had been careful not to reveal to their family or friends. And yet, somehow, Jonah seemed to know.

There was so much that Jonah seemed to know, without ever being told… Certainly, Albrecht had not told him about Karla’s increasing ill health, anymore than he had mentioned the boys. Or indeed, the trove of books from the Würtemberg tomb.

But he could not spare much thought for Jonah’s apparent powers of clairvoyance in the final, awful days of Klara’s life.

She died raving, begging all the time for Albrecht to ‘put them back.’

He was never sure if she was talking about the boys, or the books.

* * *

_Sampson Kempthorne (Died: 1873)_

There had been nothing in Jonah Magnus, when Sampson first met him, to indicate the strange path his interests would take in later years. They had formed their friendship as young fellow assistants at a firm in London, the two of them training in the art of architecture. Sampson found his colleague to be charming and personable, and he was grieved beyond measure when Jonah was called back to Edinburgh, upon the death of his father.

Sampson had visited him there, following the completion of his own training and before taking up his next post, and been received warmly. He had met some of Magnus’s friends—a young lawyer called Wells and an artist by the name of Bennett—and a very young lady who was introduced to him as Jonah’s sister. Or had she been his cousin? He could hardly recall, at this late date. It had been so long since he had seen any of them.

He had hoped New Zealand would be a new beginning for himself and for Marianne. A change for a fresh start, far away from any remnants of George Gilbert Scott and claustrophobic workhouses, and the sound of heavy boots and jangling keys echoing in his ears as he suffocated.

Those were his hopes. They were not to be realized.

Oh, he had no trouble finding commissions in his new homeland. After settling, he was quickly hired to design a set of churches, which he did gladly and with all his skill and vigor.

But the sites were plagued with problems, both structural and… otherwise. And both met terrible fates. One church collapsed during construction, the other shortly after being completed, during a service of worship. In both instances, all within their walls were buried beneath tons of rubble and earth.

And each time, upon arriving at the remains of the building, he heard…

Until his dying day, Sampson swore he heard the jangling of keys.

* * *

_Jonathan Fanshawe (Died: unknown, sometime after 1831)_

They had met at a public lecture, a demonstration of galvanic principles and their actions upon corpses. The mental attraction had been instantaneous and fierce, at least on Jonah’s side. He had been delighted to find someone who possessed the same burning desire as he did, the yearning to understand all the facets of death and to discover how they might be overcome.

For his part, Jonathan found Jonah Magnus… appealing. Friendly and personable, to be sure, but something about him made Jonathan always hold himself ever so slightly aloof. He liked Jonah but he didn’t entirely trust him; he saw the young Scot’s overwhelming charm and how it seemed to act upon others, and worked very hard to keep from falling under that powerful spell himself.

When he finally broke with Jonah Magnus, after Albrecht Von Closen’s horrific death, he did so with the knowledge that he might not long survive the insult. He was under no illusions that Jonah retained any sort of fondness for him. After all, though Jonathan did not know for certain what had happened to Barnabas Bennett, he well remembered that he and Jonah had been more than usually close for a time.

And then Barnabas was gone. Simply… gone.

The same might just as easily happen to Jonathan, if he stayed. So he left. He ran. And he ran.

And… he ran.

Jonathan spent the rest of his life wandering the world, trying to outrun the sensation of being hunted. Of being watched. He never did.

* * *

_Mordechai Lukas_

It wasn’t often that Mordechai made the journey to Edinburgh anymore. There was no point; he had exerted himself and made his money, made an adequate marriage and bought an estate in Kent that suited his patron as well as his growing family’s needs, and with his sons and grandsons to manage the ever-expanding Lukas business concerns, these days, Mordechai preferred to keep himself to himself.

He was an old man, after all. And an old man deserved his privacy.

But Jonah Magnus had asked him to call at the Institute, the next time he was in town. No reason, the cordial note reassured him. Just for old time’s sake.

And although he vastly preferred his own isolated home and his withdrawal from the world. Mordechai still had a bit of a wary soft spot for Jonah. Not quite affection, but somewhat more than a mere irritating attachment. So he went quietly north for a few weeks, to sit and talk with the master of the Magnus Institute.

Jonah was much the same as ever, lean and pale, his shock of hair now nearly the same shade of pale gray as his eyes. He welcomed the wealthy old merchant with all his customary brittle courtesies, and soon they were settled comfortably by Jonah’s fire, reminiscing about old acquaintances.

“I was very much hurt by Dr. Fanshawe’s betrayal, you know. I did truly consider him a friend. But then, I was never able to entirely confide the full scope of my knowledge to poor Jonathan. So I just… let him go.”

“Hm. Did he know that?”

“If he wasn’t able to figure it out, that’s hardly my fault. Besides, the things that touched him in Schramberg were not compelled by me.”

“And Albrecht?”

Jonah laughed softly. “Well. I think I must have an amnesty in that direction.”

Mordechai took that as answer enough. He already knew what had become of Kempthorne, and Bennett, and Wells. He did not need to know the fate of Albrecht Von Closen. His hungers did not lay where Jonah’s did. “And so, finally, there ends the tale of our original little company. It took long enough.”

“It’s not over yet. Nothing’s final until you’re dead.” Jonah handed Mordechai a glass of sherry. “And even then, I’m sure God negotiates.”

Mordechai raised pale eyebrows at his business associate—he would never commit the error of calling Jonah Magnus a friend, even if he had been inclined to make friends, which he was not. But in this case in particular, he knew better. “Which of us?” he asked warily. “And which god?”

Jonah seated himself in his accustomed chair by the fire, and smiled, sipping his sherry in silence.


End file.
